Data Recovery Service

Four Most Common Types of Flash Drive Failure

Flash Drive Failure

As handy and as easy to use as they are, flash drives enjoy great popularity. However, it’s all too easy to have lost files when your flash drive is broken or inoperative. The following lists the four most common reasons for USB flash drive failure. Take a moment to think about how each of the four reasons can lead to preventative care, of your flash drive, to prevent failure. SSD drives, USB drives and various other storage today uses flash memory.

Broken Flash Drive USB Connectors.

This is the most common type of flash drive damage. Since the drive is normally sticking out of the front or side of your PC or laptop, it is easy to accidentally bend the connector. Sometimes it will snap the USB connector completely off. Your USB port consists of 4 main data and power lines. When damages happen it is essential to unplug the flash drive. Do not plug it in to any computer until it’s repaired.

Find an established company so that the data can been recovered. Power flows through the USB connector port, the possibility always exists that a short circuit can cause power to flow across components or data connections. By plugging it back in when damaged, you could destroy the drive and all of the data on it. Power surges destroy vital fuses on the printed circuit board (PCB). You can also destroy the PC motherboard. The single most common failure is bad workmanship. This leads to memory sticks that suddenly stop working. Yes, we know. It comes with no warning, so bookmark our website.

Photo Damaged Flash Drive.

Below is a photo of a typical bend and break of a USB drive. Based on NAND flash memory, USB flash drives are small data storage devices. In this photo you see the controller chip, furthermore this chip is square in shape and tells the device how to communicate with the device it’s plugged into. Think of it as a chip that is a translator of two languages such as French to English. In this case the stored data on the NAND wafer is Mr. French and the PC it will be plugged into is Mr. English. The square controller allows the data to be understood exactly on both sides by Mr. French and Mr. English. When this chip stops working, due to overheating etc. the data is scrambled and non functional.

Failure to USB Flash Drive, Broken USB Port.

NAND Flash Memory Wafers Become Dislodged.

Surface mount NAND wafers reside on these flash storage drives. eProvided has seen cases where excessive heat causes the surface mount NAND chips to fall off the PCB. These flash devices and the printed surface boards (PCB) are sensitive. Dislodged NAND wafers are very difficult to recover files from. You need expensive equipment and years of knowledge.

Some do-it-yourselfers might try their hand at soldering the connector back on themselves. However, the circuit board might have also been damaged and there might not be a good connection to solder it back together. If there is essential data on the drive, a professional can repair or rebuild the drive, allowing access to the memory chip and getting back the lost data. eProvided receives many drives where users attempted to get the data of the damaged drives themselves. Usually this type of attempt fails for the do-it-yourselfer. Strangely enough, the more one fiddles with tiny connections the more likely the data will not be retrievable.

Failed Flash Drive Components.

There are many small components inside a flash drive, and any one of them can fail. Micro-controllers, resistors and capacitors can burn out and need replacement. A professional might have spare parts on hand, or can use an identical flash drive as a source of parts to repair your drive and retrieve the data. eProvided is one such company that has accumulated over 25,000 different flash drives. The most common components to fail are the controller wafer. This resides on the PCB, it’s is almost always square. Next, the NAND wafers are almost always rectangular. They are a surface mount product or have legs that connect to the board. The legs usually total 48 or 52. These NAND wafer legs connect directly to the printed surface board. USB drive recovery solutions are available, call eProvided with any questions.

An important note: repairs may be sufficient for a data recovery firm to extract all your data. The final device is not the same as the original manufacturing process. Although the essential data can be recovered by a professional data recovery company, the drive should not be used. In conclusion, It will fail, soon.

Flash Drive File System Corruption.

Removing a flash drive that is still in the process of transferring files can permanently destroy your files. Therefore, flash media suffering power surges, computer viruses or other problems can all cause file system corruption. The damaged data is corrupted on the master boot record. eProvided will rebuild by hand on specialized machines the MBR. When damage occurs professional storage recovery firms have an advanced variety of system tools. Repairing and recovering lost data is a seamless but time intensive process. This is very difficult. It is best to use the safety features on your computer to remove flash drives.

Since any of these problems can strike at the most inopportune time, it’s good to keep backups of all the data on your flash drives. However, in case disaster does strike, a professional at flash drive recovery may be able to safely recover your data. Corruption to your USB flash drive file system is solved every day at our labs. We use Dropbox to deliver and store your files after a success recovering your documents. We will help you understand the benefits of reaching out to a company like us. For this reason send us a message.

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eProvided: Four Most Common Types of Flash Drive Failure was last modified: March 18th, 2017 by Bruce Cullen